Details of the absorb mechanic?

[carroto]

Paragonwiki doesn't have any details about how absorb works, and searching these forums hasn't yielded me much either.  Is there a detailed description of what absorb is and how it works anywhere?

[Beul]

It just works as temporary extra HP. Think of a Halo shield for an example.

[FrostyDelicious]

Pretty Much what Beul said. Another thing to note is it does not act as a heal, if your at half HP, you will notice that it wont heal your Hit Points back but you will see temporary hit points show up over your existing ones. 

[Some Random User]

One important fact is the Absorb calculation being independent of any healing the same power does. They are both Schedule 1 bonuses, and Enhancements track these as two effects even they they're not, so you may have situations where you care about different values because of how the base values or global buffs from Set bonuses or whatever is interacting.

Edited August 12, 2019 by Some Random User
better wording

[carroto]

23 hours ago, Beul said:

It just works as temporary extra HP. Think of a Halo shield for an example.

If I'm understanding that correctly, then a character wouldn't take any "real" damage until enough was inflicted to chew through the temporary HP.

 

So how does that work on an auto or toggle power that grants +absorb?  Wouldn't that be constantly refreshing the temporary HPs?  Seems like it would be impossible to take any actual damage unless it was coming in at a rate that surpassed the absorb amount and refresh interval of the power.

 

Looking in the character builder it shows the Blaster power Reaction Time as granting 6023.8% absorb every 3 seconds.  What does that mean?

[Oneirohero]

2 minutes ago, carroto said:

Looking in the character builder it shows the Blaster power Reaction Time as granting 6023.8% absorb every 3 seconds.  What does that mean?

First thing, if you're using the character builders like I am, the Absorb value will be bugged anyway, you don't really get 6000+% absorb, that's impossible. The real number may not be obtainable except in game by reading the power display. You can assume that if you have an Absorb of 10% that using a 32% Heal enhancement will get you about 13.2% absorb instead, for example.

 

As for powers that constantly give Absorb like [Spirit Ward], it can be quite powerful as it will refresh its base value every three seconds about four to five times, thus granting your target 12-15 seconds of Absorb for about 19-20% of their max health (assuming you slot it past it's softcap) . But I do not know of any Auto or Toggles that have Absorb, that would be broken by design. All Absorb powers I've seen are Procs or Clickies so you will have to tell us which power(s) exactly are Auto/Toggles with Absorb for me to follow up on that question.

 

Absorb really is just temporary HP that is consumed before your real HP does, and can in fact help your character's natural regeneration give you a chance to heal back some of your real HP while Absorb is in effect. Absorb values will usually have a duration like a buff, if it's not consumed by taking damage it will disappear soon enough. And in the case of Spirit Ward, it will actually overwrite it's own Absorb value to ensure it doesn't stack on top of itself.

[AkuTenshiiZero]

9 minutes ago, carroto said:

If I'm understanding that correctly, then a character wouldn't take any "real" damage until enough was inflicted to chew through the temporary HP.

 

So how does that work on an auto or toggle power that grants +absorb?  Wouldn't that be constantly refreshing the temporary HPs?  Seems like it would be impossible to take any actual damage unless it was coming in at a rate that surpassed the absorb amount and refresh interval of the power.

 

Looking in the character builder it shows the Blaster power Reaction Time as granting 6023.8% absorb every 3 seconds.  What does that mean?

I don't know the exact values on that power, but a friend of mine uses it and basically it ends up giving him a small absorption shield every few seconds.  It doesn't appear to stack on top of itself, but rather replace itself.  So if it is, for argument's sake, a 100HP shield and you take 50 damage, the next refresh will bring it back up to 100HP rather than 150HP.

 

Think of it like a tiny second HP bar that gets consumed before your real HP and refills every 3 seconds.

[carroto]

5 minutes ago, Oneirohero said:

All Absorb powers I've seen are Procs or Clickies so you will have to tell us which power(s) exactly are Auto/Toggles with Absorb for me to follow up on that question. 

There are three powers in Blaster secondary sets that I'm aware of.  I mentioned Reaction Time from the Martial Combat set, and there's also Temporal Healing from the Temporal Manipulation set, and Wild Fortress from Plant Manipulation.  Each shows in the builder as granting the same value I mentioned above, 6023.8% absorb for 3 seconds, whatever that means.  All three are toggles.

[Obitus]

8 minutes ago, carroto said:

 

So how does that work on an auto or toggle power that grants +absorb?  Wouldn't that be constantly refreshing the temporary HPs?  Seems like it would be impossible to take any actual damage unless it was coming in at a rate that surpassed the absorb amount and refresh interval of the power.

 

Looking in the character builder it shows the Blaster power Reaction Time as granting 6023.8% absorb every 3 seconds.  What does that mean?

I don't know what the 6023.8% number means.  There's probably some arcane explanation relating to the inner workings of the game's code - but for all practical purposes, just treat it as gibberish.

 

I can tell you that the Sustain power from Temporal Manipulation (Temporal Healing) gives you an absorb shield worth roughly 5% of your base max HP, refreshing (but not stacking) every 3-4 seconds.  The absorb grows to about 10% of base HP when the power is fully enhanced.  I imagine that other Blaster sustain powers offer identical amounts of absorb.

 

That's a pretty big number, equivalent to 600-800% in regeneration.  But of course absorb and regen aren't directly comparable.  Absorb numbers tend to be higher, at least among the Blaster sustain powers, because absorb can be wasted, whereas regen never is.  If you have an absorb sustain, and you get hit for 30% of your health in one blow, then your HP bar loses 20%, and your sustain will do nothing to heal you.  By contrast, a character with a regen sustain will take more damage, but he will also recover from it a lot faster.

 

Absorb sustains are probably superior at the low end.  At the high end, where you might start layering Defense or Resistance on top of your sustain, regen is probably better.  Both are good, though.

[carroto]

I presume it is calculated on base HP and not current max HP?  So something like Frostwork or IO +HP set bonuses would not increase the amount of absorb.

[Obitus]

5 minutes ago, carroto said:

I presume it is calculated on base HP and not current max HP?  So something like Frostwork or IO +HP set bonuses would not increase the amount of absorb.

Yeah, it appears to be base HP. 

 

At the moment, my Blaster has 1697.2 max HP, once you account for IO bonuses, temp powers, and accolades.  With 95.9% heal/absorb enhancement in Temporal Healing, I get 118.01 absorb per tick, which is just under 10% of the default Blaster max HP of 1204.8.

 

The number was 118.01 before I got those accolades, the other day.

Edited August 12, 2019 by Obitus

[Greyhame]

Resurrecting an old thread here because it's exactly what I was looking for.  One question about Absorb mechanics:

 

If I'm hit by an attack that also debuffs (like a Galaxy -rch -spd) and my Absorb shield absorbs all the damage, am I debuffed? 

[srmalloy]

Debuffs and damage are separate effects; in the example you give, the debuffs would be affected by any Slow resistance you had.